Home Automation Surviving a Power Cut - Home Automation Resilience I have been growing my home automation setup over the past two and a half years, and the setup has evolved to the point where I can keep an eye on the house using Home Assistant even when I'm away – provided that there isn't a power
Why Running Your Home Network off of a UPS is a Good Idea Running your home network off of a UPS may seem like overkill, but if you're planning to get into home automation, it's an investment that I've found to be really useful. I meant to write this blog post in December 2021 when I first
Home Automation Migrating Home Assistant from a Raspberry Pi to an NUC This week the Raspberry Pi that I have been running Home Assistant on for the last two and a half years died! However, I've successfully managed to migrate my Home Assistant setup from my Raspberry Pi to a small NUC computer without having to rebuild my entire Home
Home Automation Curtain and Blind Automations using SwithBot Curtain and Aqara Shade Driver I often have ideas for home automation projects, but realising those ideas is another thing. One of the ideas I've had for a while is automating the curtains and blinds in my office. I've finally achieved this using SwitchBot Curtain Rod 2 and Aqara Roller Shade
Home Automation Integrating the SwitchBot Hub Mini with Home Assistant - A Cautionary Tale I got a SwitchBot Bot and a SwitchBot Hub Mini for Christmas! And it's finally time to put these new toys to use! The SwitchBot Hub Mini is the hub for the SwitchBot ecosystem. It's designed to allow you to control your SwitchBot devices remotely when
Home Automation Reliable iOS Presence Detection with ESPresense v3 Enroll Flow and IRK I've been using ESPresense for a good few months to trigger automations in my Home Assistant setup. Unfortunately, I've started noticing issues where some automations that are based on presence detection have become unreliable. I track my presence in the house either via my iPhone or
Home Automation UniFi G4 Video Doorbell with Home Assistant I've wanted to upgrade our basic plug-in doorbell to a smart video doorbell ever since I started playing with home automation. Finally, I've gotten around to replacing the doorbell with a UniFi G4 Video Doorbell! So, it's out with the old: And in
